With outrage over the police shooting of Jacob Blake renewing tensions about police accountability across the U.S., Andrea Cabral said Thursday on Boston Public Radio that strikes within professional sports are not just major news for sports fans, but “a big deal in the world, generally.”

On Wednesday, professional athletes from men and women’s basketball, baseball, soccer and tennis all sat out games and matches to protest police violence.

Cabral said the decision by players to abstain from games and matches sends a message to American households that they “are not going to entertain you, while this … genocide of Black men and women continues to happen.”

Meanwhile, conservatives at this week’s Republican National Convention continued to depict athlete protests as un-American.

“They want to disrespect our national anthem by taking a knee, while our armed forces lay down their lives every day to protect our freedom,” Eric Trump, the president’s son, said during his speech Wednesday night.

Cabral said the sustained criticism of peaceful protesters is “way beyond lying, propaganda or gaslighting.”

“In my view it’s actually a form of treason — a variation on treason — where what you do is consistently and deliberately betray the public’s trust in democratic norms and institutions, in government itself, and in elected officials,” she said.

Cabral is the former secretary of public safety and sheriff of Suffolk County. She is currently the CEO of Ascend.